Experience places beyond the barriers
HeritageWays brings history, culture and treasured places within reach through accessible virtual heritage tours in 360°, built with the people most often left at the door.
Accessible heritage
Some places are difficult to reach.
Their stories don't have to be.
Historic cabins. Mountain trails. Museum collections. Cultural landmarks. The places that hold our shared history were mostly built long before anyone thought about who might not be able to get in.
HeritageWays uses 360° imagery, audio, video and careful storytelling to open another way in, so a place that is out of physical reach is still within reach.
The work centers people with disabilities, older adults, and anyone for whom terrain, stairs, distance or cost decides what they get to experience. But an accessible experience is a better experience for everyone: the student three states away, the family planning a visit, the researcher who needs to look twice.
Step inside
Don't just see it. Move through it.
Look around. Turn toward the sound. Open a door, read a tool mark, hear who lived here and what they made. A 360° tour is not a photograph of a place. It is a way of standing in one.
360° virtual tour · Cades Cove
Enter the tour
Loads only when you choose to enter
Barriers and ways in
Every barrier has a way around it
These are real conditions at heritage sites, and what a well-built virtual experience does instead.
Why HeritageWays
Heritage belongs to everyone
Experiencing a historic place can mean walking a mountain trail, climbing narrow stairs, crossing uneven ground, or entering a structure built long before accessibility was a consideration. For millions of people, those conditions decide what they get to experience. HeritageWays works on three fronts.
Access
Build real ways for people to experience places that are otherwise difficult or impossible to reach, and good enough that anyone would choose them.
Experience
Use 360° environments, video, audio and interactive storytelling so a person feels connected to a place rather than merely informed about it.
Preserve
Document historic structures, landscapes, artifacts and oral histories in high fidelity, so they can still be explored and studied long after conditions change.
Designed with access in mind
What makes virtual heritage tours accessible?
Access is more than getting through the door. It's how a person sees, hears, navigates, understands and moves through an experience.
HeritageWays is grounded in research that asks people with disabilities what works, using the Social Model of Disability and Universal Design for Learning, then tests it with them rather than guessing on their behalf.
The goal was never to replace visiting these places. It's to build another way in.
- Audio descriptionNarration of what's on screen
- Captions and transcriptsFor every recorded voice
- Keyboard navigationNo mouse or trackpad needed
- Adjustable visualsContrast, text size, motion
- Screen-reader structureLabelled, ordered, announced
- Downloadable experiencesWorks without a connection
- Multiple ways to learnRead it, hear it, or explore it
- Tested by users with various disabilitiesBefore launch, not after
See where heritage can take you
Explore. Discover. Connect.
From a historic structure tucked deep in the mountains to a museum collection halfway across the country, technology can open doors that geography, mobility, age or terrain sometimes close. We're beginning in the Great Smoky Mountains, with a vision for meaningful places across the United States.
Lorna Keathley, Founder of HeritageWays
Built on research
A different approach to access
HeritageWays grew out of Lorna Keathley's work in cultural heritage, museum visitor experience, communication and accessible technology, and out of a question she kept running into on site:
How do we use technology to create equitable access to the places and stories that connect us?
Her doctoral research answers it by handing the question to the people it affects. Working with the National Park Service and other heritage organizations, she photographs structures in 360°, gathers oral histories from descendants of the families who lived there, and tests each experience with persons with disabilities, including people who are blind and people with visual or motor skill disabilities. The work runs across three phases, and nothing is called finished before the last one.
- M.S. Communication Studies, University of Tennessee
- M.A. Cultural Heritage Management, Johns Hopkins University
- Ph.D. History and Cultural Studies (in progress), University of Birmingham
- 2015–2026 Associate Museum Curator, Visitor Experience at the Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center
- Since 2020 Heritage and Museum Part-time Lecturer, Johns Hopkins University
- 25 years University of Tennessee, Knoxville, retiring early in fall 2021 as a Public Speaking Lecturer
Help open more doors
Every tour begins in a real place
Creating one takes research, travel, 360° photography, equipment, editing, oral history work, accessibility testing and the time of people who know these places well. Support of any size moves the next site up the list.
Give
Fund the next site: the camera time, the travel, the audio description, the testing sessions with participants with disabilities.
Partner
Museums, parks, historical societies and community groups: bring us a place that deserves to be experienced by more people.
Take part
Test an experience and tell us what actually worked. Participant voices shape every tour before it's published.
There is more to explore
Heritage should be within reach
History should be experienced. Culture should be shared. Join us as we build accessible virtual heritage tours that put America's remarkable places within reach, one experience at a time.